I just waded through this whole thread. Whew!
I do not eat my chickens. The primary reason is that I am lazy. I am not fond of plucking and cleaning chickens, although I am seriously considering buying meat chickens (NOT Cornish Cross's). I would do it if the chicken was a young meat chicken, but never for an old rooster.
The second reason is that by the time one has decided to cull the chicken, they are usually past their prime, and I am not enamored of the idea of stewing up an old bird.
The third reason is that I can get a good price for them at the auction. A good sized rooster brings $3 to $5. If I have several roosters, I choose the ones I want to keep after they are old enough to show their true colors. I keep the good ones and the rest go to auction.
As for killing an animal for food, I have no trouble with that. When your three doe rabbits have just about buried you in bunnies, the feed bill is growing and you have no more cages, the bunnies are suddenly not "too cute to eat." I have raised, killed and eaten many a rabbit.
I worked in a nursing home and the nurses used to ask me, "How can you kill a cute little bunny?" Well, I would say, you take them by the hind legs, put your fingers under their chin... I never got any further. They ran screaming and never asked me again. Dunno why.
I shot and killed only one kid goat. It was actually very good, but since I could get $30 to $40 at auction for a ten to twelve week old kid, I figured I really couldn't afford to eat them.
We raise our own beef and pork. The calf is taken to the slaughter house because it is just too big for us to handle, and we don't have the equipment needed to cut it up properly. The pig we shoot, cut up and put in the freezer.
I don't make pets of my chickens. The thing I enjoy most about chickens is looking out my window and seeing them roaming free. And free roaming they are. There are no fences. If they had a mind to and a sense of direction, they could go to Chicago. They seldom even cross the road, though. They cluck, scratch, take dust baths, eat bugs and watch for hawks. We don't even have any trouble with dogs. The neighbor's dogs occasionally kill a chicken, but only his. They haven't done that for a long time, though.
I had a bantam rooster who was a pet and I carried him around on my chores because he was too small and young to put in with the hens. He loved it. When he got big enough to put in with the hens, I was chopped liver. He had discovered girls.
A note to the vegetarians: Less than 10% of the population can survive well on a vegetarian diet and even fewer on a vegan. For most people it is definitely not a healthy diet. Neither, for that matter, is the government recommended diet. Diet is a very individual thing and it is best governed by what your body needs, not some moral ideas or the food pyramid.